'Gift that keeps on giving': Dems celebrate Trump's latest 'nightmare' challenge

The recent spending battle in Congress found President-elect Donald Trump at odds with some of the Tea Party firebrands and budget hawks in his party. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) voted "no" on one of the spending bills that Trump supported, and Trump angrily responded by calling for a primary challenge to the arch-conservative.

Trump urged lawmakers to "get rid of" the debt ceiling, which some of the Tea Party budget hawks adamantly oppose.

The United States avoided a federal government shutdown by passing a three-month stopgap spending bill that Trump opposed. But the debt ceiling battle, according to Politico's Jennifer Scholtes, rages on.

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In an article published Monday, Scholtes wrote, "GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump's debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill. One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks. The other entails winning over Democrats, who for the most part, rejected Trump's initial debt-limit gambit last week."

The debt ceiling, Scholtes emphasizes, will be "an urgent issue for Trump as soon as he takes office."

"Getting Republicans to agree on $2.5 trillion in cuts to mandatory programs over 10 years would also be a challenge for GOP leaders," Scholtes reports. "Trump has ruled out reductions to Social Security and Medicare, the costliest of the programs."

Scholtes adds, "Of the roughly $4 trillion the U.S. government spends on mandatory programs each year, Social Security benefits alone total almost $1.5 trillion. Democrats say the proposal is a public relations nightmare for the GOP."

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Trump favors extending the corporate tax cuts of 2017, which Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut believes could hurt Republicans if they also push for Social Security and Medicare cuts.

Murphy told Politico, "Listen, this is the gift that keeps on giving. This is the absolute worst case for the country — a massive tax cut for the richest of the rich, paid for by slashing, to the bone, health care for seniors and poor kids."

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